Criminal Defense Attorney in Philadelphia | Featured Cases

Defendant in medical student’s killing to return to Phila.

Nader Ali is charged with beating Lea Sullivan to death with a bat. He is in custody in New Jersey.

By Jacqueline Soteropoulos
Inquirer Staff Writer

The man charged with fatally beating medical student Lea Sullivan last month outside the Whole Foods market on South Street agreed to be extradited to Philadelphia at a court hearing in Bergen County, N.J., yesterday.

Nader Ali, 26, is expected to be transferred within days. His attorney, John B. Elbert, said he would ask a Philadelphia judge to order a prompt mental-health examination of his client.

Ali - Sullivan’s former classmate at Jefferson Medical College - has been held for several weeks at the Bergen Regional Medical Center, Elbert said. There, Ali was found to have bipolar disorder with psychotic and schizophrenic symptoms, Elbert said.

Sullivan, 25, was attacked from behind on Nov. 7 by a masked assailant wielding a baseball bat. The attacker fled in a black Oldsmobile with a New Jersey license plate. That number led police to Ali at his parents’ home in Franklin Lakes, Bergen County.

Detectives also recovered the suspected murder weapon - a Louisville Slugger bat - in the trunk of the car.

Sullivan, a graduate of Radnor High School and Harvard University, never regained consciousness and died of massive head injuries a day after she was attacked.

At yesterday’s hearing, Bergen County Superior Court Judge William C. Meehan ordered that Ali be transferred to Philadelphia within 10 days.Homicide detectives expect to retrieve Ali early next week, police Lt. Michael Morrin said.

Elbert said Ali consented to extradition on his advice.

“I consulted with him, and I advised him that sooner or later the inevitable would happen, and he would be extradited,” Elbert said.

Ali’s father, Farouk Ali, said yesterday that his son “has nothing to hide, and going to Philadelphia - it’s better for everybody.”

Farouk Ali said his son’s ongoing bipolar disorder “is the main thing in his actions.” He said he would continue to stand by his son.

“My son is struggling with a disorder, and I believe he deserves all the help that we can give him.”

Ali, a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University, was placed on a medical leave from Jefferson last year for what the school termed “extreme changes in behavior.”

Edward McCann, chief of the District Attorney’s Homicide Unit, said prosecutors were “well aware there might be a mental-health defense in this case.”

“We’ll be prepared to address that if we have to,” he said.